Back again ! Child Actor !!

I was at the ripe old age of 3 when i had my first acting experience! A friend of my dad came home and took one look at me and fell in love..(no not the child molestor kinda love!, but the kinda love that erupts for a producer when you see that you can get a cute child actor for free!).After much persuation, I was fully bathed, snot cleaned from my runny nose, powdered on my face beyond recognition(as was the style those days to make kids look presentable!), wore same cloth/design shirt and shorts(as was the style those days!) and packed off to the studios with my over bearing aunt(my dad's sister who happily fulfilled the void of not having a mother in law to my mom and terrorised everyone in the house!).My aunt was proud as a peacock about my acting job and off we went!.After many waiting hours and a few tantrums (not from me, from my aunt!) later, I was called and made to sit in between the late Gemini Ganesan and B.Sarojadevi for a song/scene, I dont remember, but the photo is still proudly displayed in kalahasthi at Bhavani press, which belongs to my grandfather.Dunno if it still exists, but the last i saw, the photo was still there!.My father then decided that I was going to be the last minute replacement for a child artiste who absconded and cast me as in "Yellelo naane' , a kannada film (superhero genre )directed by my dad which didnt run in theatres the time it was taken to be made!.
A few years later, another friend of my dad, producer Coganti kutumbarao (father of director K.Vasu), saw me at home making faces at the mirror and acting stupid( a trait at 6 that continues till date!) and decided I was going to be the child version of N.T.R. in his film Deeksha. My dad said no, my aunt said yes and that was the end of the arguement and no guesses as to who won!. So off I went to Bharani Studios (it belonged to the late Bhanumathi and sadly it doesnt exist today!). I was made to wear 2 inches of make up, red lipstick and rouge all over my cheeks making me unrecognisable to ...myself! After the make up man finished his handiwork and showed me the mirror, I shrieked, wailed, cried and wanrted to run away!. the make up man got offended that his artistry was not appreciated and told my aunt that it was a black and white film and that is the way it had to be and walked away! My aunt believed him and dragged my ass to the set and there I was at the ripe old age of 6, fully comprehending that there are about 80 odd pairs of eyes looking at me and expecting me to utter the lines, cry, run to my dead father played by some unknown actor and cradle his head in my lap! phew...I was a petrified dish!! I realised this was not a "smile and look here, i will give you choclate" excercise i had done earlier!.
This was serious stuff!! Surprisingly, I managed it after only a few rehearsals and I guess I was doing fine till the director decided to get creative!. He called me aside and said to me in his gentlest voice.." imagine that is your father, imagine the person next to you is your mother, crying for your dead father!" How will you feel? and then proudly looked at his assistant directors as if to say, thsi is how you draw performance from a novice!! They in turn looked at him in fake admiration(for fear of their jobs!). The smug director's face quickly changed, when the words he spoke to me hit my comprehension and I started a long wail followed by crying, rolling on the floor and sobbing my eyes off! No amount of cajoling and pleading worked on me and the director , clearly hurt that his plan backfired asked me to be taken to the make up room where I was supposed to be cooled off and my aunt, who didnt know what happened and when I told her that Director uncle told me that my dad is dead, she took off on the assistant directors and they didnt dare say a word coz she literally chewed their heads off and took me home! I cried all the way to home and only on seeing my mother did I stop and a bribe of few ice creams later, drifted off to sleep!.
A few phone calls, apologies and bonding of the friends , all was resolved and oof i went to the studio...again!! this time, there were no real life examples and i guess i did my job well enough to be flooded with offers! This time, my father decided he was going to stop this nonsense , lest it would affect my studies( like i was an ace student!! moi was struggling in school from day one! ) and told my aunt some story about how all child artistes grow up to be short and the lights affecting their growth! my aunt believed it and my acting career that began at 3 ended at the age of 6, just when i was beginning to understand the nuances and thrill of it! Actually, I kinda liked the pampering of the film people,the sets, the lights, the adrenalin rush of a take and the focus of everyone on the set on that singular moment.....!
Thanks to my dad,I was put firmly back to reality,(maybe he sensed the comfort with which i started leaving home to the studio!!) He packed me off into the world of school, studying and books that made no sense to me!!
So I merrily continued my excellence in substandardness of acedemics!!

Let's talk about SEX baby !!

Deep within the bowels of my ...mind (lest you guys assume i am going somewhere else!) there are a million thoughts!..about nothing and everything!. lemme start with my favourite topic..sex!.(Ok, now there are many antennas going up, I know!! Is he going to offend me by writing blasphemy? Is he crossing the line? Is he going to keep this blog clean or is he going to fall by the gutter?) Chill people..read on and decide! I am writing this after much confusion and clarity of chaotic thinking!
Woody allen said...sex is beautiful between two good looking people!, the trick is finding the right 2 goodlooking people and fitting in !!
Sex is dirty....if it is done right!!.. we spend so many years of our lives thinking about it ( all the hours of the days added together) wondering(for the uninititated!), pondering ( for the worriers of their performance earlier!), fantasising( for the newcomers!,pun intended), dreaming(for the love struck!), anticipating(for the starved kinds!),worrying( for the fat, over the hill kinds!),
dreading (for the many years married and/or the younger partner kinds!) readying ( for the viagra kinds;)) anticipating (for all!) ...we all spend time on it..but no, we dont wanna talk about it because it is taboo!..puhleeaase,..let's be grown up about it for a change. it is there, it exists , we all do it, we all did it and we are gonna do it till we die if we can help it!
I am so happy to see the days gone where women pretended to do men a favour by going to bed with a man! women pretended to do it because they are supposed to sacrifice for their man! women were told not to as much as squeal/let out a squeak.. when in bed with their man! Mothers told daughters to ration it lest the husband took it for granted! I am so glad to see the revolution come by and women come to terms with their individuality, their independence, their feminism, their wants and desires and not be afraid to voice them out and take what they need... from life and from the bedroom!. (here's to celebrating them and their freedom!) Sex is nothing but an expression of love !!
There are many men who still question women's virginity, look at their desires with suspect, question their experiences, judge their normal needs, balk at their desires and verify and compare their performance/ manliness caused by deep rooted insecurities!.
Well they are a dying breed that is still alive and thriving in this civilization! I really hope and pray for their extinction..or at least for that mindset! Dont get me wrong here..i am not condoning or talking about premarital sex ( and getting myself into shit load of trouble!) I am talking about a woman, today's woman...whether she is from the village or city, she has the right to have a healthy sex life and be happy with her partner who she chooses/chosen for her !
I was doing a lot of frantic pondering while i was doing my hurried yoga and then clarity collided with my confusion and created chaos in my already housefull pea brain! So decided to talk about sex and how normal it is for everyone and everybody! Vola.. no more taboo, no more whispering about it, no more unrequitted passion! We are all human beings and we all deserve happiness!
There are men who havent heard of the female orgasm and see her as a child bearing vessel! Trust me, I hear men talking and I hear women talking too!! MEN, get a life!! they have far outrun us in the thinking department, looks department(needless to say i guess!) achievements department (look at our president and the real president of the congress!!) look at our +2 results!! they have out run us, out gunned us, even out manned us!!
I guess any clever man would now say..ma'm what would be your wish? I will follow, you lead !! I am not deriding men, just asking them to relinquish the archaic dominance we have held for all these years and learn to treat the fairer sex as the stronger sex and the logical thinking and multitasking (which we cant do to save our manhood even !!) race of humanity! Respect them as we did our mothers, but let us not mistake them for our subserviant mothers!, A mistake I see a lot of men do and expect to dominate them like our fathers did our mothers (our mothers didnt have options,..due to lack of education, lack of support from their own parents, lack of finances, lack of role models!)..! A timewarp mistake that has caused many a divorces in our/this time !!
Respect the woman, respect her needs, respect her wants, respect her mind, respect her heart, respect the fact that she goes through hell, to give you children with your name... and you will have peace !! Forgetting which, men. you will be faced with ' hell hath no fury than a woman scorned'
I have been borne by a blessed woman, a blessed woman bore my child!
I have slept with women and not had sex!
I have had sex with women and didnt want to sleep with them !
I have loved some women but didnt lust after them!
I have lusted some women but didnt feel love !
I couldnt afford some women, but some offered to buy me(which i refused, of course!)
I have wanted some women for life, but life didnt let me keep them with me for life!
I have been wanted by some, but i didnt want to be kept !!
I have loved and lost! ..only to realise, that I have always been loved by the ones I have lost !!
SEX,. my friends, is not between two legs, it's between two ears !!
Hope i have not offended anyone and if I have, thats a bonus !!

back to FLASHBACK !

My growing up years have been pretty traumatic and nerve wracking for me and to onlookers, pretty tame and ...lame !! As soon as I was put in school, seeing the sea of humanity was overwhelming for me and very very early on, i realized i was no Einstein !! I could have been blamed for many things, but being smart or intelligent wasn't one of them in school! I wasn't clever enough to sit in the front row and wasn't rebellious or daring enough to be allowed to sit in the back row with the adventurous boys who everyone admired for their being pulled up, scolded ,caned or dismissed to the principal's office !I started in 'OXFORD ENGLISH SCHOOL', a private school where everyone spoke Tamil (what an oxymoron for such a posh sounding school name!) I quickly became the butt of ragging and jokes by the tall boys and the fat boys who loved calling me 'vella kakka' (white crow) because I was fair skinned and I have never hated my skin as much as I did in school ! It was an all boys school and I was spared the embarrassment of being me ,probably because I blended in! ( I was awkwardly thin with a gangly walk and a chicken chest with narrow shoulders which my friends constantly reminded me of ...and my self esteem was uncomfortably below sea level !!)

Somehow i managed to pass (excel, in my book!!) by keeping my marks at a 40 + level and the only thing I did well was in English, thanks to my voracious reading! I read everything, from newspapers to comics to weeklies to novels to ....porn ! (that came later, but we will get there eventually !!) I used to read so much because i was bored out of my skull, being a lonely child! I had nowhere to go, wasn't allowed to go anywhere by my overbearing aunt and a scared mother who thought i was too good for the neighborhood boys who constantly bullied me! In the mean while my dad quit Devar films because he decided having 14 fractures in 6 years while acting with animals that threw you (elephants) mauled you( tigers) and scratched you (monkeys) and bit you (dogs!) was enough! He decided to go to Bangalore to become a director! btw he started as a camera assistant, assistant director, editing assistant, dubbing artiste, actor and then became a director and then promoted himself to a producer, where he lost all his money and some of my money which i would earn in the future, but we will come to that later!!

Before he left to stay in Bangalore for a few years, he decided to test my educational skills and took out my school bag and started asking me questions from my school books which i had kept for purely ornamental purposes and not to do mundane things like studying!.Needless to say, he was appalled, frustrated and angry with my stupidity and promptly proceeded to arm himself with a coat hanger (wooden, thank God!) and thrashed the living daylights out of me, with my aunt trying to wedge herself in between us and my mom keeping a respectable distance from the proceedings!! I was extremely relieved he was going to Bangalore and decided that very day i was going to be smarter...at not getting caught!, not studying or education !!

With my father safely and temporarily out of the picture, I continued my excellence in academics getting average to passable to 'almost pass' and 'barely pass' marks in all subjects..! My bench mates in Oxford English School were 'Puttanna' and 'venkat', now known as "ShivrajKumar' and ' kadalora kavithaigal Raja" ! I didnt think much of them and they returned the favor by thinking I was a complete loser!.We kinda bonded because of our below average scores in all subjects!. Ten odd years later we met each other...at the film fare awards where I received the best new comer award in Telugu, Shivraj kumar received the best new comer award in Kannada and Raja received the best newcomer award in Tamil ! We bonded again and were surprised to realize all us ' losers' (who have been written off by all the teachers barring none )had made something of our lives and it was a tearful and joyous moment in my life to see my school mates up there receiving awards and I was proud to be there with them !!

Life was going well (by that I mean being invisible, obscure and under the radar of teachers who completely underestimated me and rightly so !! )for this awkward 'almost' teenager when my parents had a brilliant idea of putting me in the next compound... Shrine Velankani School, a co-education school and my real troubles began ! My pathetic exposure to girls (no, i didn't expose myself to them like in my childhood, but showing my face to girls was enough to make me cringe then for this totally self conscious geeky pubescent boy!!)

All that and more in the next installment !!

Today!!

I have always been a firm believer in today, as in this moment..Why, because nobody gives a rat's ass what you did yesterday and nobody will know wtf you are gonna do tomorrow!! This moment, today what you do, how you behave, how you respond to people is what matters! AHAM BRAHMASMI!! There are many old timers who make youngsters scamper, scoot,run for their dear lives the minute they open their mouths!! The reason is not bad breath, though that is also my suspicion.. it largely because the old timers start their every conversation with..'in our days", things were so beautiful, 'in our days' things were more disciplined, 'in our days' people treated people better and with respect!!....

If you ask me, i will tell you its all a bunch of crap! ( i will tell you even if you dont ask me also!! :))we all know in the olden days things were not so streamlined nor disciplined, we all know there was zamindari attitude to lower class people..(no one can afford to say the things old timers said to workers and such these days) and those days beauty is very relative to the beholder's eyes..my biggest fear is becoming one of the old timers who thinks the past was beautiful!, only because he was important then and not now!!. I get my sense of importance from my work and not from how people respond to me!

This happens largely to people who have not yet come to terms with loss of 'star status' or have stopped being a Demi-God! (trust me, its all in their heads! these days people are not remembered a few days after they are gone, so thinking 'the sun wont come up without me, moon will not shine without me' bullshit is a very bad defense mechanism of a retarded human being whose insecurities stemming from a far inferior complex that makes them hide behind self importance and denial thereby making their empty lives livable!).These are people who take themselves seriously and not their work! their work doesn't define them, they, their market and their 'glamour' does! This goes for actors, CEO's, politicians and 'desperate for publicity and fame' industrialists!!

I tell my actor friends to travel,. see the world, not so that they get to travel or holiday but to understand how frickin little we are in the wide expanse of this earth and how many, many many people have achieved success, greatness.nobility,immortality, Godliness (is there such a word? I wonder?!) by their work, hard work that has come from discipline, toil and sacrifice! We are in a position where people love us, admire and adore us...let us be nice to people who want to greet, meet and talk to us!. Let us not be snobbish, let us not think the sun shines out of our ass, let us not assume our shit dont stink! is what i politely tell my actor friends!!. Some take it in the right spirit, some dont..its ok! I am not here to change anybody by advise or lecture! I try saying everything with a pinch of humour and trust me, even i have been told off or insulted when i tell facts to my heroic bretheren, by the heroic bretheren!

What is the point of this rambling? (actually, i am beginning to wonder..i have the attention span of a firefly, i meander, wander, go off tangent so much so that i wonder where and who I am?!) I guess the point is that we should never take for granted the gifts that we have been given...trust me,. all of us are given gifts, we haven't learnt to count our blessings yet!. When we do, we will understand its not so bad!! We will also understand that we are part of a process, system,life force, energy of life mass making this Earth what it is! ( actually, we are depleting earth's resources and making it an empty dustbin, but thats another day, another blog!..trust me to wander off..) We are a part of a big picture and we are not alone, we are not special and least of all, we really dont matter that much in the bigger scheme of things!! Greater men have bode farewell to this earth and the earth has not stopped rotating on its axis!

My dad, a very old school man from films used to be careful about everything ( only for things i did, he must have had a ball in his heydays, i am sure!!)

He used to keep saying, you are a 'public figure' be careful what you do and say in public!, you are a'public figure' careful to keep your inaccessible fortitude!, was his constant advise to me! All this was at my ripe old age of 18!!. It kinda got to me after a while and i was telling a friend ' screw this 'PUBIC' figure bullshit man, cant take this anymore!!. My dad heard this and unleashed hell on me and told me off in all the four south Indian languages he knew well and added Hindi and English scoldings and abuses which he didn't know so well!! All this in the guise of me not talking advise in the right spirit and that stardom got to my head!, was his ranting.He accused me of coming home at 6.45 when the shoot got over at 5.30 when it was half an hour's drive only to get home! I was dumbstruck and didn't understand why i was being treated like a girl/object/pocession (you take your pick!) I came to know later that he was being overly protective so that i didn't marry any actress and run away from home!!. He needn't have bothered, because that was what exactly i did!! Well done with the discipline dad!!

There is a lot of murder that happens to the English language on a regular basis in my industry! Here are some snippets or nuggets (depends on how much you enjoy them)

SELF MURDER ...to denote suicide!

PETROTHAAL...to denote betrothal!

COME CASUALTY..to denote come casually!

VAKINI ...vauhini studios

TUPPING...dubbing!

SOOS...juice!

YACT...act!

will provide more soon!!

BACK To The beginnings!

With insanity in my genes and a head injury (which my mother dismisses off as nothing, since it was her fault for rocking the cradle hard enough for my head and wall to meet each other with a resounding thud!!) I steadily grew from a constantly sickly baby to a fully grown up 13 month,once in a while sick toddler!. My mother always wanted a girl child and took great pleasure in making me wear girly clothes and letting me parade around the front gate of my house. To top it, i had long tresses, saved for tonsuring in Tirupathi which kept getting delayed due to my dad's busy non-paying job as an assistant director in Devar films.The pale face, long hair and girly clothes made people wonder if i was a boy or a girl and a few of them kept asking me what i was as they were passing by..

I seem to have taken it for a while and after that got progressively pissed off at the question and proceeded to answer the boy or girl question from passerbys with a lifting of the frock i was made to wear, thereby exposing my gender beyond all doubt and quickly satisfying their curiosity!.After a while it became a game to passerbys to ask me my gender and be flashed by good old me!! (guess i had the exhibishionistic streak then too, though i would rather call it entertaining streak, if only just to save face or look good in my blog!.)

My father who returned to take me to tirupathi came to know about this and wasnt as amused as the passerbys or my aunt and gave me a hiding, with my aunt trying to protect me..(this became a norm for the rest of my growing up years!).The spanking left me unable to sit right for a few days and I learnt my first lesson in being conservative and not display my genitals for all and sundry to see!

(obviously the lesson was quickly forgotten as i grew up into a young man! :) just kidding folks!)

A few months later we shifted to chennai because my father decided to ask for a salary from his bosses and they decided to pay him since he was working as an assistant director/ animal feeder/animal trainer and also stunt double for artistes who were feeling squeamish about fighting angry roaring, murderous tigers or lions!.My father must have wanted to get into the movies real bad to go through all that with wide eyed enthusiasm. My grandfather, Mysore Seshaiah Naidu had a tryst with the movies a few years earlier where he wrote scripts for some well forgotten movies and was sent back to tend to his cow farm.So he had a suspicious view of my fathers promises to become a famous 'something' in the movies someday!

In Chennai, we lived in Theynampet somewhere of which i have no recollection of and then moved to south west boag road which was a thatched house.(it later became a tin shed roof and then became a tiled roof and then it became a building when i bought it with my hard earned money, but i will come to that later!) I recollect my early years there with a strange incident that happened to me.Since our house or tenement if you can call it that had only one bathroom and right across the house were empty fields..(this in T.Nagar where a single ground is now going for crores of rupees!) Early in the morning as soon as you look across your house, you were greeted with a wondrous sight of many many children squatting in the field , grimacing with complete concentration of trying to empty their bowels, some by themselves, some by the egging of their mothers or fathers who were standing nearby(if the child was tiny). (i heard some women and men did it in the early morning darkness before the sun came up, but i sadly never saw that sight!)One day there were guests from out of town residing in my spacious two room house and my mother told me to go to the fields when i expressed my desire to empty my bowels,since the bathroom was full and was going to be for a while since there was a queue waiting.I was trepidious at first but curiosity got the better of me and the thought of being alone with nature and a jug of water completely unattended seemed like a fantastic idea at that time and i ventured into the wide open world..(read that as 10 feet from my front gate to the fields!)

There i was blissfully squatting in the wide open fields with people passing by and an occasional car rumbling by and enjoying the new sensations of fresh air blowing around my ass while i take a shit. Suddenly i felt an unfamiliar sensation on my ass and i turned around to see a very large pig( i was tiny so it must have seemed very very large!) was eating my shit and was trying to reach the source of the shit too with its tongue!! The sensation of its tongue on my ass was what made me turn around and more over, the pig was pushing my ass with it's face to make me move over so that it can have better reach!!.I was up like a spring and was running like a bullet towards the house and into my mother's arms wailing, squealing, crying and reporting the incident. My mother found it hilarious and said there are a lot of pigs who feed on the excrement since it is open fields and and laughed about it for months on..but i didn't find it funny at all and was vary of pigs since then on and it was the first incident in my memory as a child and the house i remember growing up in!!

So,when i say humble beginnings my friends, its not even a joke, but i had my share of fun, joy laughter and love as a child, thanks to an adoring aunt who thought i was the best thing since 'baked bread' or 'the invention of the wheel' and a mother who was curious of me since she didn't understand my weirdness till a lot later in my life!

A little thanks to my dad too for not being around too much since i was terrified of him most of the time! He was a little man with a very big temper!!(probably where i get my temper from!)

PILIM PLAAAFFFF !!

Still cant believe i was the fastest sperm among the 10,000 odd swimmers!! wow!.

And if i was the best...you can imagine the quality of the rest!! lol

The beginnings...

Born in kalahasthi , a temple town (read that as boondocks, coz it was a one horse town then!my friends from there assure me nothing's changed, but i'm digressing!) which is near Tirupathi".I was born to a middle class family that had insanity firmly set in its genes. Father, M.S.Gopinath, almost 30 married Radha Devi who was at the ripe old age of 15 . The marriage was orchestrated by my father's sister Rajeshwari, who got widowed at the ripe old age of 14!..( Can you imagine when she got married? Avery eligible age of 9 !).Reason why my aunt got my dad married?? Supposedly my dad's roving eyes at his elder brother's marriage to my mom's elder sister!. So my aunt in her innate wisdom, decided then and there to ask for my mother's hand in marriage to my dad!.My grandfather,(mom's dad) gleefully accepted, realising he is sending out not one, but two daughters out of the house! Double whammy!!(And no dowry too!)

My grandfather, supposedly the master of the house had no say in the matter since he had been silenced (read that as verbally pulverized into submission) by my aunt who kept blaming my grandfather for her early marriage and widowhood!! And that too for around 20 years! if that kind of constant blaming and nagging doesn't quieten a man as it did my grandfather,nothing else will! I was always surprised why he didnt run away or kill himself !So in actual fact, my aunt became the master/mistress of the house which saw all the brothers run out as soon as they got married in fear of her iron handed rule and the sisters anyways had to leave to their husbands' houses (with great relief!) by the way, did i fail to mention that my grandfather had 11 children out of which 3 passed away in childbirth and by the time i was born, my grandmother had passed away (must have been relieved to pass away from the insanely maddening family of 11 ..9 children and two parents!).

So my dad married mom and a year later, on a fateful not so sunny day of august 26th 1964 a pale white,tiny, scrawny insect was born... Me! :)

The present...

45 years young man trying to find...himself, in this big bad, wierdly funny world!

Life is a battle..whoever said otherwise is bullshitting you..right now i am battling 10 extra kilos!! need of the hour is to banish them, preferably to the loo..but sadly, they will only go gram by gram in the gym!

Battling for money! whoever said, 'seek and you shall receive' is bullshitting you, again !

Seek and you will be called desperate!! you will earn painfully slowly when you work the hardest!

I have been pulverized into submission by fate into believing in....FATE ! :) when you are supposed to MAKE, you will, and when you are supposed to BREAK, you shall !

Fighting with myself to be happier...phew that doesn't make sense even to myself!! so we will skip that part ..for now !!

Oh and another thing..life believes in checks and balances! If you are blessed with something more or extra in 'one' of these three ( 1)money or 2)fame or 3)personal life-happiness,) be sure to know that you will have less of the other one or two ! have you seen a very rich man with a happy family life filled with love? have you seen a very very famous guy who is not battling personal demons with drugs and such?? have you seen a very loving family man that is not struggling for money?

And there are strange creatures walking around like me who have less of all three !! :))

So, moral of the story...nothing!!

Deal with the shit you got!!...It could be worse...Trust me !!

Why the heading 'pilim plaaff '?? there is an uneducated production manager who loved to declare a film as a failure the minute it got released! so we would take great joy in asking him how the film is faring in the box office and he would reply with gusto...ayyyye..pilim plafff ! (read that as film flop!) and we would roll over in laughter, holding our stomachs !!

Past revisited !!

Hospital...my father takes one look at the insect (me ) in his hands and wonders how i am so fair, since neither he, (my father) nor my mother are as fair as i was ?? He wonders if there are any white people in Kalahasthi ?? On careful and frantic pondering (If it is possible to mix the two!), he realizes that there is only one white person hanging around the Kalahasthi temples for 11 years (trying very hard to be a sadhu of sorts )and after 11 years no one in kalahasthi has been able to determine the gender of that white person...so he decides to banish the thought of adultery and owe it my mom's dad's pink fairness! (believe you me, he was frigging pink!, beyond fair where your skin would be so thin and reddish, you wonder if you are gonna see the insides of him if the sun was at the right angle??he was that pink!)..of course my mother was fairer than my dad and all attempts at humor by my dad about my color were quickly silenced by my Aunt who adored my color and christened me ' dora' ( which simply means a British,white person addressed as such by a subservient Indian!)

I was born quietly , but refused to be quiet after that! I took one look at the surrounding, decided they were not good enough for me and started to unleash hell (read that as constant crying and wailing!).My mother , at the ripe old age of 16 was definitely not equipped to handle a little insect that has turned into a sleep depriving, actually a sleep killing monster that would go on all day and all night.

She constantly fantasized about strangling me, throwing me in the well and leaving me in someone's door step far, far away! But under the strict supervision of my Aunt who for some strange reason doted on me, the little monster, my mom had to behave herself and be a nurturing, caring ,patient mother to someone she didn't understand the attachment nor relationship, because she was too young to be a wife to my dad..leave alone mother..to me! :)

My father took about a few days of my constant wailing and decided he needed to urgently join the film industry and be as far away as possible from me and my ruckus!!

So my father joined Devar Films in Chennai as an assistant director, who were making movies with all animals like tigers, lions,elephants and monkeys etc as the lead hero in their films! So in actual fact my father decided he was better off among dangerous animals than around me, the little wailing monster!

My mother, in one of her weaker moments, couldn't take the all day and all night wailing anymore and pushed the cradle too hard.(the cradle those days was a saree tied to the fan!!). The saree cradle that held me went flying along with crying me inside and hit the other side of the wall! I believe i passed out because the wall hit my head (or is the other way around?, anyways the damage is the same i guess and is there for all of you to see!! Insanity in the family and on top of that a head injury?No wonder i turned out so ...!) To make matters worse, my mother realized she was pregnant! She struggled with the thought of telling my Aunt, but knew that my aunt would force her to be a mother again. So my mother in her great wisdom stemmed from all her life experiences of 16 years, decides to abort the baby by eating some root prescribed by the friendly neighborhood foetus killer (read that as the town midwife!!) My father in his infrequent visits, heard from my mother about her pregnancy just before leaving to live among the animals in Devar Films and was content that he had 2 children and fearing a third which might come out like me, decided to get himself neutered! (read that as vasectomy, not actual dismembering of genitals!!)

So by fate, grand design or to the joy of my parents ( I wish!) I became the only child to carry the Mysore family name! (dont even get me started on the strangely, quixotic and maybe even idiotic family name now...i will save it for later!)